Monthly Archives: July 2017

Having enjoyed working with some amazing children (and adults!) this year on our radio station, it was a real joy to listen to some of them talking about how it has been a highlight of their year to sit behind the microphone and to learn new skills.

As a community project this has been an enormous success so far, with a diverse range of people joining us in the studio to share their experiences and backgrounds. For the children this has been a wonderful chance to connect with their community, developing excellent questioning and interviewing skills, whilst at the same time spreading the message of what the local community can offer in a weekly live broadcast that now reaches 800 listeners a month through our online station.

In the 9 months that our station has been live it has also been incredible to see the impact that using radio in education has had on our children’s literacy, oracy, confidence and resilience. With our Hub Plus Station from Anderton Tiger, built and installed by Russell Prue, we have been able to utilise this incredibly easy to use, child friendly equipment to support so many areas of the curriculum throughout the year. It is the children who have run each show, working the microphones, choosing the jingles, timing them to perfection and planning and scripting every show. The ownership they have of their radio station is unparalleled and we are working with children from Year 1 to Year 6, all of who have the skills and expertise to step behind a microphone and to give a professional delivery every time.

From radio plays to poetry, creative writing and even through topic work, our school has benefitted so positively from having our radio station and our community involvement has been far richer as a result. But don’t take my word for it, here are William and Oscar to tell you what they have enjoyed this year and what the impact of working with radio has done for them:

After the success of our collaboration with the fantastic Russell Prue of Anderton Tiger Radio at the West of England ICT Conference, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to write an article about our day for Hey magazine!

Radio has played such a big part in developing the confidence and literacy of so many of our children this year, do please visit https://soundcloud.com/westwoodradio to listen to our children’s live broadcast recordings and see how they have progressed in under a year!